For years, Apple has been steadily designing more and more chips for the iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Watch, creating a better user experience and helping to make its products more competitive.More recently, the company There has been a new incentive for large-scale bets on silicon: microprocessors with components designed by Intel, ARM and AMD have been hacked.
Apple co-founder Steve Jobs has long believed that Apple should have its own technology for the internal components of the product, rather than relying on other chip makers such as Samsung, Intel and Imagination Technologies, including ) Mix and match components in 2008. In 2008, the company closed the door to producer PA Semi, which took a significant step in that direction. Two years later, Jobs unveiled the iPad. All focused on the tablet's giant touchscreen, reading capabilities and creative applications, but in fact its most ground-breaking technology is hidden inside the product: Apple's first self-developed processor, A4.
Since then, the original 'system on chip' has been replaced by more and more powerful processors, and now Apple customizes its devices with a variety of features, such as handling AI tasks, tracking your steps, enhancing game graphics, ensuring Face ID, or Touch ID, running Apple Watch smartwatches, pairing AirPods smartphones with your phone to help Macs run more efficiently, and as a result, spawning one might threaten Qualcomm's and even Intel's dominance one day Chip giant.
Mike Olson, senior analyst at Piper Jaffrey, said Apple has cut its component costs by independently designing chips and has taken a first mover advantage in the future because it holds both research and development at the same time, And to avoid the secrets of their own by Samsung and other rival companies know Apple declined to comment.
Apple was not the first to build the chip itself, but it was the most successful one, with the chip divisions being owned by Hewlett-Packard, Motorola, IBM and Royal Philips Electronics Inc. The companies ultimately failed to make any inroads because of chip manufacturing The threshold for the industry is extremely high: there is a huge capital investment and a huge scale, and Apple wisely chooses to focus on the design of its silicon (for which Apple uses a reference design from ARM) for chip manufacturing, It is handled by other manufacturers including TSMC.
As long as the company can sell 300 million devices a year, it makes sense for Apple to work on a complex and costly chip business, and of course, the traditional big company in the industry will not be sitting dead. Qualcomm is investing in the next generation of 5G networks and several are in the making Manufacturing AI chips, Intel is also focusing on the development of mobile processors.At the same time, Apple's main rival Samsung itself is a large chip maker.
Apple has chip manufacturing and testing facilities in downtown and surrounding areas of Cupertino, Calif., And in the city of Herzliya, a hotbed of new technology, employing hundreds of people, led by Johnny Sloki Johny Srouji.) After working for Intel and IBM successively, Slough joined Apple in 2008, comparing his chip architect to 'artist.'
Slokki has been honing Qualcomm's modern engineers in recent months, and the chip maker has made modems for the iPhone, but has been involved in legal disputes with Apple due to its license fees for smartphone makers Among them, Qualcomm solicitation may mean that Apple plans to eventually develop their own mobile phone connected to the cellular modem.According to Bloomberg last year, for now, Apple is considering this year's iPhone product line using only from Intel And MediaTek modems.
Last year, Apple expanded its mobile chip portfolio by adding a Bluetooth wireless W2 chip version for the latest Apple Watch and a 'Nero Engine' AI chip and custom graphics for the iPhone 8 and iPhone X product lines Unit (GPU) is expected to be released later this year, the new iPad may also be built-in Apple graphics engine and AI chip.Apple involved in GPU development move, overwhelmed Imagination Technologies previously provided for the iOS device chip business.
So far, only two Macs come with Apple custom processors: the MacBook Pro with the Touch Bar and the iMac Pro, according to a person familiar with Apple's plans that Apple is developing at least three models with custom coprocessors Mac upgrade models, including a new laptop and a new desktop, as early as this year.
Apple watchers believe it is only a matter of time before the company designs its own CPU, by which time Intel will lose its fifth largest customer.